RadioActive 4/7/11

Producer/Host: Meredith DeFrancesco

Today we discuss five pesticide bills before the Maine legislature’s Joint Standing Committee Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. Two bills being considered would essentially erase recently passed legislation. One would repeal the pesticide registry, which requires landowners to inform residents, within a certain distance, at the beginning of the season, that they can get on a list for aerial and air carrier pesticide spray notification. The second, would severely limit the distance within which landowners would be required to observe notification wishes, cutting it from a quarter mile to 100 feet.

Another bill before the committee seeks to restrict the use of herbicides and pesticides on the grounds of schools and childcare facilities.

This News Just In: The Maine Superior Court has just ruled to vacate the Land Use Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant Plum Creek’s development plan for the Moosehead Lake region. Attorney Phil Worden represented the Forest Ecology Network and RESTORE: The North Woods in this challenge to LURC’s decision. Chief Justice Humphrey called LURC’s action an “unauthorized, ad hoc procedure,” and concluded that the public was denied its legal rights to speak out on the final version of Plum Creek’s plan.